Ogun State police commissioner, Kenneth Ebrimson, on Saturday assured of a healthy police-students relationship in the state, but advised the leaderships of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and National Association of Ogun State Students (NAOSS) against using students’ activism or unionism to shield criminals.
Ebrimson spoke in his office at Eleweran, the Ogun State Police Command headquarters, while addressing representatives of NANS and NAOSS from various campuses of higher institutions in the state who attended a peace parley with the state police command.
The meeting was convened by the Ogun State government through the Special Adviser to Governor Dapo Abiodun on Student Matters, Azeez Adeyemi, ostensibly to foster harmonious relationship between the police and students in the state against the backdrop of the unsavoury encounters between students and the police in recent times.
Azeez and the students’ representatives had complained of incessant police harassments and victimisation of their members in all campuses of learning across the state.
The students also lamented that police operatives in the state have erroneous impression about them, accusing the police of always making generalised branding of the entire students in negative robes, using the mistakes of a single or a handful of students.
According to them, this wrong impression informed the routine indiscriminate raid on students’ communities and arrest of students even during examination periods.
But responding, Ebrimson assured of the command’s commitment to the safety and comfort of students in the state, saying the police remained their friends at all times.
He also urged them to endeavour to separate activism from crimes lest they be found to be shielding the wrong persons.
He said: “I need your assistance, I need your cooperation, particularly in the area of fight against cultism. That is the greatest challenge we have in this state; not armed robbery, not kidnapping but cultism and it thrives in tertiary institutions.”